The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

"Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life."
______________________________________

Random Shots and What We May Learn From Them

by One
who has Tried "To Teach the Young Idea How to Shoot"Volume 3, 1892/93, pgs. 250-253

When
the question was asked of Demosthenes, "What was the chief part of an
orator?" he answered, "Action." "What next?" "Action." "What next
again?" "Action."

Perhaps
after careful study of some of the startling answers given to
apparently simple questions by young children, we should be compelled
to acknowledge that the answer to the question, "What is the chief duty
of a teacher?" certainly of a teacher who aims at reaching the
understanding, and is not satisfied with mere parrot-like repetition,
would suitably be, "Explain, explain, and again explain."

Probably
one of the most difficult problems to be faced by such an instructor,
is how to follow the advice inculcated in the title of one of Charles
Reade's novels, "Put Yourself in His Place." If it is supposed to be
desirable that we should, now and then, "see ourselves as others see
us," it certainly would be a very great advantage if we could see any
subject as it presents itself before the mental vision of a small
person for the first time.

Unless
we can be quite certain what impression is being produced, ten chances
to one that little brain is busy weaving some fanciful deductions very
unlike those which we wished it to draw.

For
instance, it is not easy to imagine how the very simple words of the
following lines could be liable to misconstruction:

"Once
in a pleasant garden
God
placed a happy pair,
And
all within was peaceful,
And
all around was fair."

And
yet when it occurred to me to ask the little fellow who had repeated
it, "What is meant here by the word pair?" promptly, without a shade of
hesitation, came the answer, "A fruit tree!" What more likely than that
garden and pear should suggest this association of ideas, and what a
nice foundation was being laid for future misapprehension.

That
same child had become firmly convinced of the fact that Pontius Pilate
had suffered death by crucifixion. A little questioning revealed the
cause of the mistake to have been the misunderstanding of the sentence
in the Apostles' Creed, "Crucified under Pontius Pilate"; that boy
firmly believed that there were on Calvary four crosses, one above, one
under it, with those of the thieves on either side.

On
another occasion this child was so vehement in asserting that King
David had been "a very wicked man," that he was asked to give his
reason for such a very emphatic expression of opinion. The answer was
wholly unexpected: "Because he said in his haste, all men are liars."
Possibly previous experience of having plainly stated his doubts as to
some person's veracity, and a lively recollection of the reproof
incurred by so doing, had gone far towards forming this little fellow's
estimate of character. Most people can look back to a time when their
ideas of a king consisted of a gorgeously attired personage seated in
perpetual state upon a regal throne, holding a golden scepter, and
wearing a jewelled crown, so that they could easily sympathise with the
serious problem of a king trying to unite England and France under one
ruler. "How could he sit upon two thrones at the same time?" There is a
grave difficulty here, when one comes to think of it, especially with
the Straits of Dover to be taken into consideration. Evidently the
common phrase "ascended the throne" needs to be broken down into
simpler words.

Figurative
or poetic language often creates difficulty; for instance, after
repeating with apparent appreciation the lines-

"The
spearman heard the bugle sound,
And
cheerily smiled the morn,
And
many a brach, and many a hound
Attend
Llewelyn's horn,"

the
little elocutionist gravely asserted, in answer to the question, "Who
smiled?" "The huntsman!"

Some
wrong answers are amusing, because of the evidence they bear of the
dense stupidity of the perpetrator of the blunder, while others are
interesting for the reason that, behind the mistake can be detected, if
searched for carefully, some glimmering of sense. Professor Ball, in
his fascinating book "Starland," tells a story of three students, whose
self-confidence in presenting themselves for examination in astronomy
could only be equalled by their total ignorance of the subject. In
answer to the query, "Does the earth go round the sun, or does the sun
go round the earth?" The first man promptly responded, "The sun goes
round the earth." Without making any remark the examiner gravely
propounded the same question to the second student, who, suspecting
that his companion had come to grief, and hoping to profit by his
mischance, chose the other alternative, announcing as his belief that
"the earth goes round the sun."

Still
the examiner made no comment, but submitted the question once more to
the third aspirant for collegiate renown, and he, at least, deserves to
be credited with some ingenuity, for, seeking to avoid all uncertainty,
he coolly answered, "Sometimes one, sir, and sometimes the other!"
These were random shots of the very worst kind, showing no knowledge
and no thought, a sort of reckless guessing which has been defined as
"aiming at nothing and hitting it." Surely there was considerably more
sense in the answer given by a child to a somewhat similar question,
"What are the two motions of the earth?" "It goes round the sun by day
and round the moon by night." Evidently that small brain was working,
and some confused idea of the cause of day and night was accountable
for the decidedly novel epitome of scientific facts.

Some
random shots, though flying very wide of the mark, may help us to
realise the magnitude of some of the gigantic boulders which lie on the
difficult road to learning. It is not easy for us always to remember
that much of what has become familiar to us is almost incomprehensible
to children. They accept the state of civilisation which surrounds them
as a matter of course, and cannot readily grasp the idea of progress
and all that it implies. A class of small children were being taught
the early history of England, in the times of the Britons; the teacher
thought she had fully explained the difference between the habits and
surrounding of our ancestors and those of the nineteenth century-she
had dwelt at length upon the primitive customs, the style of, or want
of, clothing, ignorance of the arts and sciences, the total absence of
good roads &c. At the conclusion of the lesson a little girl of
seven volunteered a question (children's questions are delightfully
suggestive). Being encouraged to propound her difficulty, she did so by
demurely asking, "Had the Britons not even tramcars?" It did not strike
her that there was anything ludicrous in her query, nor that what
seemed to her the most ordinary mode of conveyance would be slightly
incongruous when associated with road-dyed, skin-clothed savages. This
same child gave an amusing answer to the question: "What kind action
did Jacob perform for Rachel?" Probably she had never seen a well, and
the idea of rolling away the stone not conveying any clear idea to her
mind, she answered, in words which she evidently considered to have
fully explained the situation: "He turned on the tap for her."

The
conditions of environment have a great influence upon children's
answers; a boy brought up amid bricks and mortar may be as ignorant of
the ways of country life as the town mouse in the fable. How can a
child who has never seen the sea be supposed to form anything like an
adequate idea of the dangers of a storm? It is by no means an easy
matter to make the miracle on the Sea of Galilee at all real to
children in the Midland counties, when the first step must be to
describe what a boat is like? The use of colloquialisms in answers is
often amusing. For example: in the North of Ireland there is a common
expression, "to clod with turf," which means the use as missiles of the
oblong blocks of turf used for fuel. A Sunday-school boy, being asked
to tell how Saul in his fury attempted to murder David, graphically
described his action by saying: "Please, sir, he clod him with
javelins!"

Another
Sunday-school incident may fitly close this little paper, as it strikes
again the key-note with which we began-the necessity for frequent
explanation.

Teacher
(examining a class on the passage of the Jordan): "Boys, can you tell
me the meaning of the words, 'The children of Israel passed clean over
Jordan'?"

Small
boy (with confident alacrity): "Yes, sir, it means that they had
purified themselves."